>> donald barlett, when did you and james steele start working together? >> guest: 1971. >> host: how did you meet? >> the newsroom of the philadelphia inquirer. it was interesting. we were both hired. >> guest: we actually arrived on the same >> we arrived on the same day. >> same day. we never knew each other and had no contact during the first year. >> host: routine you up? >> guest: a veteran of the paper, the paper changed ownership and he was very

interested in projects, and investigative projects, enterprise journalism and he thought the two of us were newcomers, might be able to work together. very often that doesn't work and people don't like to work together. we tried an experiment and so far so good. hey say. >> host: why did it work for so long? >> guest: we think it worked because a similarity of work ethics. we both love to research and report. we love to research and report and we were of sound mind and it makes for a sound mind that is hard for all of us but it was similar work habits, we believed down deep in fairness, government, private interest, not always treat the average person fairly and we sort of realize that early on in the partnership and one way or another, writing about that ever

since. >> host: donald bartlett was your first project for the philadelphia inquirer? >> federal housing administration, and it was a fascinating project that dragged on for two years. >> guest: they thought they were going to put together for three months and we wrote some articles after three months and these in turn generated tremendous response. poor people were being sold defective houses and the federal government was insuring them and they would collapse after a month or two at the same guy who sold them would fix it up again and start again with somebody else. this generated a huge response. just keep working, keep digging to see how this goes. >> host: there were warning signs for matters? >> we kept producing more and more and more. one of our editors and later

years, don't ask them any questions, it will generate 50 answers. >> host: 1979 your first book came out empire, the life, legend and badness of howard hughes. why howard hughes? >> guest: we had done a series for the inquirer and the 70s examining the howard hughes empire's ties to the federal government. a very limited kind of thing. we call it the silent partner of howard hughes, the government. it flew in the face of everybody's perception of a rugged individual and all that stuff. the publisher came to us and said how about doing a book? we said great idea. we signed a contract and a month later hughes died and the publisher said how about we make this a full-scale biography? years later the result of that was empire. cradle to grave kind of story of his life. a book we are very proud of

because it has remained continuously impressed since 1979. >> host: what were howard hughes's connections to the government? >> guest: it is hard not to imagine, hard to figure out how he wasn't connected. he had contracts across the board. from the cia to defense. they were huge. they were not small contracts. he did really well on the taxpayers's expense. what emerged was whenever you hear this rugged individualism i do this on my own, i don't need the government, if you look you will find the government somewhere putting money into that person's pockets somewhere at some point in time, these people did not do anything on their own. and howard hughes definitely did not. >> guest:

>> host: your most recent book, "the betrayal of the american dream". this is a quote from that book. it deals with an issue we are dealing with today. if congress had not enacted these tax cuts and opened new loopholes we would not be having discussions about the dangers of the federal deficit. tax cuts didn't just that in the bank accounts of rich people, they plunged the nation deeper into the red. >> guest: absolutely. in deficit financing and all these things for many years, what we looked at for this book, we didn't fully realize just how egregious those revenue losses had been. this is the point we make in the book. about people and what is happening in the american economy, the global economy is inevitable and the rest of the world is catching up with us which is why incomes are stagnant. we show it is very much because

of public policy. these things are not happening on their own. taxes are perfect example. one of the statistics in the book that has absolutely stunned people, go back to the 50s and look at the richest americans which is a specific number of people, the 400 richest people, in the mid 50s they paid the 51% of their income in federal taxes. on the verge of the implosion, economic meltdown of 2008 those 400 richest americans, the percentage was down 16%. that is a huge difference. a lot of young people don't realize what has happened to the tax burden because of those tax cuts. not just in the last decade but preceding that as well. >> guest: you can't do that and not create massive deficits. >> host: do you consider

yourselves muckrakers? is that a fair word to use? >> guest: i suppose the rest of the world considers us -- i think we have always called ourselves investigative reporters and we try to help people something they don't know to connect some dots on stories that may be out there. that is the most important thing about what we have done. we don't start out with a game plan. we are going to prove this whether it is a book or journalism we try to show here is an issue, is the world running out of oil, are the rich getting richer, are the deficits because of entitlement, so we begin testing hypotheses to see exactly what is real and what isn't. that is what drives us more than a game plan of politics or political theory. >> guest: i have never done that ever. i have picked the subject of we're going to do a number on this person or a number on this

program, that is not a good idea. it is really unnecessary. usually what we do comes as a result of a question. we hear from somebody else, from an editor or a reader. why is this happening? >> host: what about advocates? they you consider yourself advocates? >> guest: the critics would call us advocates but i don't think so. one of the more interesting things is over the years, extreme liberals or at least liberals, but that is misleading because over the years we have had some of our work published in conservative publications much to the chagrin of some people. you can't -- name one person, no

one ideology has a lock on what is right and what is wrong. >> guest: what is interesting over the years, some of the things we have written about, the range of letters. and the response of a book we wrote 20 years ago called "america: what went wrong?" much to the surprise of some liberals, folks we know, probably half of the mail was from conservatives who asked things of the book in terms of what had happened to corporations because of things out of wall street and so forth. is hard to generalize about these things. one other thing about advocacy, we feel if we had brought things to light, some other part of the process, when it dies it dies. if somebody else picks up on those ideas, the way it goes. our job as far as we are concerned ends when we bring something to light and a lot of journalists feel crutch, something they brought, attention to the public picked

up and run with. >> host: in 1994 your book america:who really pays the taxes comes out. any attempt to tax the country out of its annual deficits would prove futile. therefore a new and more just tax code should be accompanied by a reduction in federal spending amounting to at least 10% of general fund outlays. >> guest: sounds like it would be relevant to today. >> guest: we have always believed taxing and a certain amount of restraint are important. the problem we have had with some things today is the emphasis is supposedly on cutting and the forces just want to cut very often are not increasing revenues and both go hand in hand and some of the negotiations over the last few

weeks there has been a slight glimmer that more and more people seem to recognize you really need both. you can't do one and not the other. >> host: what is the nexus between wall street and washington? >> wall street, once it gets the movement between wall street and washington has gone on forever and not to denigrate everybody who works on wall street, coming had a problem with a different perspective, not necessarily to the benefit of the largest number of people in this country. it works to the benefit really of quite often a handful of people. their approach to government. >> host: you began at the

philadelphia inquirer. where were you there? where did you go and where are you now? >> guest: we left the inquirer in 97. we were there from 70 to 97 and it worked on our own for one year until 71. then we went to time magazine for ten years. >> host: and now? >> guest: vanity fair. >> host: james steele, give us a quick history of the award you have won as authors. >> guest: two of the ones that are probably on most people's radar, one in 1975 and the other in 1989, two national magazine awards, 1999, 2001 when we were at time magazine. that is rather unusual. for people to win in both of these categories. national magazine awards --

beyond that, most of the major journalism awards over time we have won, book awards, other awards, the total is somewhere around 50. that goes back to the early 70s. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv's monthly in that program. this month co-authors james steele and donald bartlett are our guests. they are the authors of eight books. we will show those to you in just a minute. we want to get you involved if you would like to participate in our conversation we will put the phone numbers on screen, 202-585-3880 in the east and central time zones, 3881 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. you can also contact us on social media, make a comment on our facebook page facebook.com/booktv. you will see it posted at the

top of the page and if you have a question or comment we will get to as many of those as possible. you can send us a tweet at twitter.com/booktv or@booktv is our twitter handle and finally you can send an e-mail to booktv@c-span.org. we will get to those very quickly. here are mr. bartlett and mr. steele's book's beginning in 1979, empire, the life, legend and madness of howard hughes. in 1985, nuclear waste in america came out. and in '92," america: what went wrong?" america:who really pays the taxes? america:who stole the dream in 1996, "the great american tax dodge" house spiraling fraud and avoidance are killing fairness, destroying the income tax and costing you, that came out in 2000. critical conditions:how health

care in america became big business and bad medicine, 2004, and finally "the betrayal of the american dream" came out in 2012. james steele, the use of the word american and america throughout your books. when did that become a trend for you guys? >> guest: it became a trend in the "america: what went wrong?" book which was a series prior to that inquiry that we expanded into book form. the idea was these books are about average americans for the most part, what they're going through, national in scope, the problems are not endemic to one area of the country and they resonate with people. america is one of those words with such deep and powerful meaning with readers and viewers because it gets to the heart of what the country is about. it wasn't a conscious thing in the beginning when this name was

developed in the case of "america: what went wrong?" in '91 and '92 but after that, it seemed to be kind of a way to capture those issues that we wanted to portray to people. it hasn't been in every book but it has been with many of them. >> host: your 1996 book america:who stole the dream your report you receive 30,000 letters in response to this magazine style feature. how did you research that book? >> the 96 book, a really big book was "the joy of hate" to. we realized when we finished it, one of the huge areas, we didn't explore to the extent we felt we should have. it was almost 100,000 word

newspaper series. people lined up around the block to buy the reprints. >> guest: we are talking about "america: what went wrong?". >> guest: one of the things left out of that book wasn't treated with the same degree that it should have been was trade and that was what happened with "america: who stole the dream?" heavier emphasis on trade. >> host: i want to read two quote from "america: who stole the dream?" beginning with in the global economy constructed by washington and wall street all americans live next door to a low wage country end a second quote from that book because there is little real difference

between the political parties on trade there has been little real difference in dealing with an issue at the heart of the formulation of national trade policy, the revolving door. >> guest: we talk about that in the recent book and it is one of the things people found most and lightning particularly about the more recent book because most people say i am for free trade, it is a great idea and we made a point in "america: who stole the dream?" and the more recent book that free trade is a wonderful idea, a great idea but all your trading partners need to practice in the same way or else you don't have true reciprocity, you have the u.s. being taken advantage of which is why we have a $10 trillion trade deficit. one of our major trading partners, very unusual situation has developed and was also encouraged is movement in and

out of congress and lobbying and so forth that has assisted very much in promoting various free trade ideologies. they sound good, they sound like apple pie and motherhood but until you look and see how they are playing out in the real world, you see the way we practice in this country is not the way it should be practiced and that is why it has eliminated jobs, why we have the trade deficit and trading partners can maintain policies that are very detrimental to us and our workers because they know we will never in any way get particularly tough on that issue because such free trade be leaders. a lot of that is incurred by political process and influence peddlers who insist that process. >> host: in "the betrayal of the american dream" you talk about the boeing corporation and a faustian bargain. what is the faustian bargain and

how does it involve the boeing corporation? >> guest: boeing got into a series of agreements with china. one day it is going to come to regret because the company will be either a chinese subsidiary or working for the benefit of china and not a u.s. company and without blowing's plane escorts, sale of boeing planes, our trade deficit would be massive and what boeing has done is turn over its technology to the chinese to the extent that they are now producing their very unknown medium-range, equivalent of 737 plane, they won't need belling any more. at some point in time, china is

very nice but we down need you. this is more about government's involvement, and it just has the handwriting in the wall. >> what is the faustian bargain? >> guest: in exchange for selling the chinese airplanes, transferring production to china, all of this in the short term, able to sell your planes to china, and production in the meantime and we continue to ship more and more of it, research facility and even the manual on how to build aircraft, put together over decades by

belling, taxpayer supported and boeing is a major defense contractor. for the short-term borrowing has made this bargain but in the long term it can't work to our advantage. the chinese have created their own commercial aircraft industry financed by the government, started by the government call the supposedly free trade is supposed to be about, no secret about it. what does it mean down the road? one great export we have is probably going to be in peril. >> host: you rightfully 70% of the 787 dreamliner is foreign content according to the society of professional engineering employees and aerospace, the union that represents boeing engineers. in contrast boeing's 727 was originally built with 2% foreign content. >> that changed.

it also explains why employment in the future is going to be very dismal because jobs are gone and they are not coming back. >> host: critical condition, how health care in america became big business and bad medicine came out in 2004. you write whatever their purpose prescription drugs, 30% to 60% more, the same medication sold anywhere in the industrialized world. governments elsewhere to not consider drugs to be just another consider item but products vital to the health of their people. >> guest: the only thing i would change in that sentence is i think 60% is low. no doubt it is much higher. there's a cancer drug that just came on the market, $28,000 for a single treatment.

that is not the real world. if people want to understand why health care in this country is in such bad shape, all they have to do is look at drug prices and the prescriptions, americans consume more prescription drugs on a per-capita basis than any population in the world. necessary? absolutely not. >> if we had a ceo from a drug company out here he would say what about the research we put into this, we have to get our investments so we can find more drugs etc.. >> guest: what those people don't understand at what the drug industry has been good about keeping quiet, most drugs do not work. if you tell someone that, they are really shocked but the fact of the matter is 50% of the people taking drugs derived 0 benefit from those prescription

drugs. is because of the internal makeup of their bodies. they don't work. nobody ever tells people that. the fda or another agency comes along trying to take a drug of of the market the industry will bring forth these crying people say and i am going to die, baloney. they don't work. what i always found amusing, the thing the medical industry is most quick to respond to is vitamins. you excrete them in no time. they don't work. the same is true for escription drugs. they don't work in 50% of cases. it is not 50% across the board.

cancer drugs don't work, are only effective in 25% of the cases. 75% are worthless and then goes up to the disease and these are from the drug industry's own internal studies, not ours or some think tank, or some person who thought the pharmaceutical -- the drug industry's old day. >> guest: the reason the industry says they need those profits for research is that is the only argument they have to justify higher prices here. they sell these medications around the world and they're not selling these at a loss. they're still making money elsewhere but other governments have said and most close at hand to canadian companies are examples of this have said these kinds of prices are not acceptable, there is a public interest involved. they still make money elsewhere. they just make more of it here

than anywhere else because there is no regulation on prices. >> guest: this will continue exponentially as the industry becomes more of a global industry which it is now. research is moving offshore, drug deals will be marketing drugs more heavily than other countries especially third world countries. most countries don't have that kind of money to spend the americans do. >> host: what about the recent trend toward advertising prescription drugs? >> guest: you can chart the effect of the advertising. the most heavily advertised drugs are the most profitable drug for the pharmaceutical industry. study after study has shown that. americans are responsive to advertising. it is why some countries don't permit it. they prohibit advertising. >> guest: you can chart the

growth in drug sales almost from the time the widespread advertising was permitted in the 90s. >> host: in the year 2000, the great american tax dodge came out, how spiraling fraud and avoidance are killing fairness, destroying the income-tax and costing you. income-tax e evasion is a crime, avoidance is perfectly legal but the line between the two is often blurred, a murkiness fostered by congress. it has to do with how they permit -- one of the things that tax dodge book got into detail how we didn't explore any significance was the hole explosion of the offshore accounts, all the jurisdictions not just in the caribbean but the pacific, one senior rope as well, liechtenstein and so forth began to show how that had become such a powerful factor.

and couples with that was the growth of the internet. suddenly the internet was a way of democratized tax avoidance and tax evasion in some cases. all of these were neutral that were not in existence a few years before that. congress -- we talk about this in the book, be rated the irs for the way it was going about collecting taxes. we made a point in the book, nobody likes to pay taxes i don't care who you are. it is one of those things that goes on. the problem wasn't the irs but the way congress, the way they amend its or don't amend it, the weight they have an opportunity to make it fair but don't do that, this has gone on for years. this is what creates this murkiness out there and makes people think certain things are permissible. the hole explosion in the

offshore stuff, has continued to add a rate that astonishes us. this is the good old days of background in 2001. the amount of money sitting offshore not taxed, some of it was not. and a significant ago after that. >> guest: this obsession, multi trillion dollar deficits, apply the tax laws the way they should. deficits might not be there. >> host: let's talk about reform of the tax system, the national sales tax, flat tax, simplification, and -- >> guest: back over the years,

and they black out over taxes, the american people lobbying played for suckers, only so much you can take. there's nothing going on that can't be solved very simply by treating people equally. and through all of this work of hours, and trying not to use them and should not use, my perception of what is not fair is different from yours or somebody else's. treating people equally should be easily understandable and should be applied across the board in taxes and it is not and never will be because special

interests in congress, there is no provision in the tax law that special interest can't get changed. >> guest: one thing you talked about was simplification, tax reform. these words are part of the debate on taxes often for decades but every time they come up is like they are new and a favorite one that you always hear, close loopholes in the tax code. you confine the congressional record over the last 70 years, quote about closing loopholes. legislation that was passed to close loopholes. the same with simplification. you should see the quote from the 1930s congressional record. how long the need to simplify the tax code? all these things are historic and go on all the time. what we have made in numerous times over the years anytime tax reform is mentioned you have to be careful because it very often becomes a door for those special interests to get what they want

more for certain broadbased things to happen like rate reduction that turns out to help a handful of people. everytime we try to reduce rates and broaden the base you will always hear this out there. almost invariably works out for the benefit of the wealthiest americans and to the detriment of the average person. >> guest: my favorite newspaper series which i think we regret to this day not converting to a book was identifying the provisions in the '86 tax reform act that benefited a special person or company or corporation because what we did is we when to back through the tax law, the actual language said -- what was -- a person born in a certain

date or a person living in a certain city. and will be excused from this. new tax law. >> one of the things -- >> guest: i get speechless on that. this is so corrupt that it boggles the mind. [talking over each other] >> the nascar owner, this is an old tradition that went back. >> guest: the famous -- got a big one. back in the 50s. these things are not new and it is important to recognize that. you can't believe what is written down, and one of the provisions, it repeals this really heinous, in the virgin

islands, gotten rid of all of this and play this up. and the sections above will not apply to a corporation in delaware. on or about march of 1981. owns one or more office buildings. >> this was a company based in california making use of the tax shelter. and his tax lawyer went to congress and got a local congressman put this in exempting him. and we deciphered these, egypt apologists' the way we were connecting these. i never knew who this guy was, thank you for telling me who it was. the reason we bring this up is this is an old pattern.

every time tax reform comes up, let simplify the tax code using the explanation for simplifying it, two rates or three rates. simplification has nothing to do with rates at all but has to do with the rest of the code. whether it is one race or three rates or ten rates you still look at the table if you are a taxpayer to find out what you owe. there is so much foolishness about the tax code that fools the average person. we made a lot of the career trying to cut through that. >> a case where the people in congress, no other way to put this, year in a year out, when it comes to taxes, this is a pure con period. >> guest: >> host: from "the great american tax dodge," the end of the story and have you give the back story. and find out who wrote this section that i about to read.

the ones impenetrable curtain that protected the family from prying eyes for generations was unexpectedly pierced on the night of september 3rd, 1997, when boston returned to the couple's popular in manhattan home after a visit to the family at 66,000 acre ranch in kenya. walking into the six story townhouse on east 60 fourth street next door to the wilderness scene gallery a few minutes after midnight she found her husband in bed with a 19-year-old long legged blonde. alec hastily wrapped himself in a towel, grabbed a 9 mm handgun and pointed added at his wife and her two bodyguards, quote, i wasn't expecting anyone, he screamed with a touch of understatement. you are trespassing. you don't belong here. the bodyguard summoned to the police who arrested out and charged him with three counts of

second-degree menacing. where does that fit into "the great american tax dodge". >> guest: they are interesting family. very prominent in the art world. >> guest: in new york and europe. >> guest: very prominent. >> guest: the way that fit in as i recall -- [talking over each other] >> guest: our basic memory of that was they had a tax case where various regulations had come to light and one of the reasons they came to light grew out of this if i am not mistaken and that opened the door to this otherwise glimpse into their finances and tax situation. >> guest: which people would not

have seen otherwise. >> guest: this is something we found over the years. amazing how many records you will find related to domestic issues that otherwise you would never see. one industrialist 20 years ago let go his workers and contrast him with a woman who worked 35 years and we said the care and feeding of a family, she was taking care of her pension. people asked later where did you get such a fact? one of his wives had to show how much money she needed to support the homestead. they resonate with people, how these people are, and how to use the system. and how the average person for

access. >> guest: it is generally not known, if taxes were public, if you are back to the early 30s, the amount of total income, the amount of tax you pay was public record and if people saw the revolution, a real argument for a total openness rather than secrecy because secrecy only breeds corruption no matter what it is, it breeds corruption, and you can hear the corporate lawyers for ridge people saying that is not fair. why not? we are all paying the costs of

what is unfair about it. why not make the playing field level? just as two items, they were public for several years in the 30s, and a lot of the wealthy people at the time did their best to keep the information secret and it really was the lindbergh kidnapping, you see what is going to happen? we are all going to get kidnapped as if anyone needed that information. what is interesting and you go back and look at that, newspapers at the time ran it, the new york papers for randy list of people, really wealthy people and what they pay in taxes and real indication to look at that. i can't imagine what that would

look like if you have the same two pieces of information. >> host: the final question before we go to calls, you have to be and egypt, just to read congressional bills? >> taxes are the most demanding. what we found overtime, if you need special training you have to be patient and read it and follow through and go through to see who it applies to. some of these were quite obscure, some in terms of special interest divisions and the company incorporated on such a date requires them to go to that state and go through what the filings were. and one company issued $900 million in bonds and some

of the database people, search this and see if anybody should of bond and sure enough they came up with that name of the company and another detail in that provision match that and that is how we were able to decipher it so it is more methodical and difficult. you have to stick with that stuff and pieces together. for this is why we use records. we talked to people and always start with records because it tells you what is going on and schools un something that may be very complicated and also tells you when you interview somebody that person knows what they are talking about. sometimes people are not necessarily lying to you but just don't know what they are talking about. if you get a little background information on that, we feel that gives us a leg up to know if this person is reliable thought and that is a big issue. we don't just quote anybody for

-- we want to make sure are they legitimate? do they know what they are saying. >> host: award winning best-selling authors donald barlett james steele, eight books under their belt so far beginning in 1979, empire about howard hughes, 1985, nuclear waste in america, "america: what went wrong?" came out in 1992. america:who pays the taxes? "america: who stole the dream?" "america: who stole the dream?" 18 in 2000, "critical condition: how health care in america became big business and bad medicine" in 2004 and finally this past year "the betrayal of the american dream". sam in florida, you have been very patient, you are on with donald barlett and james steele. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to ask the authors what

they had to say about the cost to consumers with regard to copyrights and patentss in their exploration of trade and drugs? >> guest: this is a very important issue you are raising especially on the patent end. we wrote in this book about apple in particular, basically bailing out of this country completely, eliminating almost all of its manufacturing base and limiting all the jobs that had been created here, moving everything to china. what is interesting, apple is not unique in this, the global corporations that do this continue to maintain pats in this country and if they are

going to sue as apple did recently with samsung accusing it of violating a patents they expect to use the u.s. legal system even though they don't have employment here or anything but coke and employment. and as we were thinking about, why should the u.s. and the u.s. being the u.s. taxpayer basically, underwrite a legal system for the benefit of corporate america if it is not doing any serious employment in this country? >> host: let's start with some facebook comments. this is from tina. tina put on our facebook page money and politics is our

biggest threat to an equitable representation in our government. what does your research revealed as far as this issue is concerned? >> guest: absolutely right. there is widespread agreement and this is one of these things that even most parties, parts of both parties would like to get this out of it. some people would anyway. others may benefit from it. we did not explore in great detail in this last book what some of the solutions could be. we talked to people who talk about constitutional amendments to limit politics and so forth but before anything could be done she is absolutely right. something has to be done. the amount increases. the election cycle is continuous where once it was short. other countries of found ways to restrict fact to a shorter time frame which at least would save

some money. >> host: doesn't that open more loopholes? if you restrict the time? wouldn't there be ways around that? >> guest: we are very inventive in this country and no doubt folks around a political process, perhaps the only difference would be we would save a little money and a lot of people are looking at this, we couldn't agree more that that is the root of the problem. the can't change the tax code or free trade or deregulation or the whole issue of debt financing until we figure out a way to get behind the influence of money. >> guest: this is not easy. it may not even be possible if the supreme court has deemed money and exercise of free speech. that really raises the bar on us. it means anything goes from here

on out. >> host: a tweet for you gentlemen, how are the people to understand the true amount of what the government spends? where is there accessible, understandable data? >> guest: there's a lot of data. it is not a shortage of data. the problem is always a matter of analyzing. one of the stories out there that we both found disturbing, there is one whole story out there that social security is in some sort of immediate trouble and bookkeeping is not proper. that is totally bogus. social security at some point will have to be changed, the retirement age raised? quite possibly. but the fund is not in danger in the immediate future. medicare is a different animal. both of those get lumped together as though they're both the same problem and they are not. all you have to do is look at

the u.s. budget in brief and you conceal lot of these issues. that is what is interesting today. you don't have to go to the library and spend time in libraries. you can do this at your computer free 24/7 wherever you happen to be. >> host: what is a sight you recommend? >> guest: i would not settle on a single site. it is pulling together information from multiple sources. >> guest: there are several. g a o is certainly one. the comptroller of the currency, whoever that happens to be, those numbers are there. the u.s. budget is a line through numerous sites through the white house, if you were conspiracy theorists you'd think they were manipulating the budgets.

those reports are voluminous. the drug committee on taxation every year. >> host: learn to -- [talking over each other] >> guest: it takes time. there are no shortcuts. it is not exciting work. people are always asking have you ever been threatened? we have never been threatened sitting out a library table looking at these data. that is the heart of the work. it just takes a long time to systematically go through it. it is open to the average citizen today in a way the was more difficult of years ago. >> guest: you with your question are putting your finger on a critical problem that goes unmentioned and that is the news media. and especially now the news media is under such pressure and it is never going to be the same again. it is hard to imagine how this is going to play out but going back in time two or three years to what existed over the last

two hundred years, you can lay the blame for what's -- much of what has gone on by its failure to ask the right questions. >> host: allen makes a comment on our face book page. are there any young journalists that you feel are replicating the type of in-depth reporting you have crafted? >> guest: there are a lot of good journalists out there and we are in an odd situation with a national award named after a set ministered by foundation at arizona state university. >> guest: i thought we were supposed to wait until we were dead or somebody misjudged. >> guest: pretty amazing material goes into the word processor, that is just one. and individually judge contests from time to time. there's a lot about standing

work going on in this country certainly at the regional level land sometimes at the national level. is it effort enough and have there been giants breakdowns? we think one of the great breakdowns right now in the media are in what we call but vehicle quarters, follow that story day in and day out because a lot of those have been decimated by cutbacks. a lot of the things that we have done, still quite a bit of that going on. if you go back decades in this country, there is less of it in some ways than there is now. as long as people have an avenue, published or viewed or whenever it happens to be we have a certain amount of confidence, that is what everybody is worried about. >> guest: that is especially

true because most people get their information from television which does not do well with complicated subjects. it doesn't do it at all. it is kind of irrelevant anymore. this is the real problem. the source of most news for most people. >> host: diane in arkansas, you are on with donald barlett and james steele. >> caller: where do i begin? you guys are so refreshing. the first time in years that i have agreed with the guests on c-span. i am so surprised. when i first -- i have been waiting 25 minutes and at first i wanted to speak to you about naphtha and world trade and all,

that is -- when we out here started feeling helpless because c-span remembers when in the year >> host:s when they had call ins about naphtha they would get not one call for naphtha or the other trade agreements, not one of us wanted it and this is republican and democrat and it was still shoved down our throats and we feel helpless. nothing changes hardly because one example, there was a letter i had written my husband in 1968 when he was in service overseas, they were talking about closing the post office on saturdays. it is still the same. i go back to my kate from c-span

and political tapes -- >> host: diane is one of our unofficial archivists. shea records a lot, nearly almost all. >> guest: you are rightl. >> guest: you are right on the nafta business. we go back over a long time showing trade agreements before that and what everybody said they would do, how they would make a market share for workers at home and so on down the line. naphtha is one of the most dramatic examples of how people were sold a bill of goods. on the basis that this will be a great thing to send exports to mexico and at the time we actually had a trade surplus with mexico when it was first approved and people may all

kinds of claims about the jobs that would be created and so forth. we run a healthy trade deficit, we have never been in surplus since that time. every surplus that has analyzed jobs showed there has been a loss of jobs from the nafta agreement. what we say is we need to enforce reciprocity with trading partners whether they be mexico or japan or china or this ongoing gutting of good paying jobs that continues not just in manufacturing but into the whole service sector as well. that is the crux of the new book, trying to get people to wake up and realize we need to

have a different policy, we need to have a different approach or we will continue to lose these jobs. >> host: in "the betrayal of the american dream" barlett and steele right global free trade is to cut the cost of labor at home or more profitably shift jobs overall like so many chapters in the nation's trade history, shipment of work of 4 began imperceptibly as a way a inconsequential in-america invented outsourcing with you outside the corporate world realized how rapidly it and other trade policies would devastate employment across the middle class as imports overwhelmed exports and workers in industry after industry were sacrificed on the altar of unrestricted free trade. in reading through your books, it seems you don't necessarily

go for the interviews with members of congress or heads of corporations. is that a fair assessment? >> guest: we don't -- we do some of those interviews but very often we take the official statements people make. congressional hearings are filled with these statements. the congressional record is filled with the statement. in the case of corporations very often their annual reports or speeches various people make. we often use what the record has said in the past as an example to make sure it is authentic and verify that. we do our interviews but the part of what we do, piecing together that story from multiple sources and that is why what has happened sometimes supplementing also by an interview but we use all of it to tell that story. but whatever the data shows the should to be. >> guest: in some ways it is a way of making sure that people don't come back and say i was

quoted accurately because we are dealing with things that have been in print and no one has challenged, and a significant result, perfectly safe. >> guest: it is amazing how much of this you find in the congressional record for all the craziness that emanate from congress. .. committees hold are an astonishing record on all of these issues. trade, taxes, regulation, or the lack thereof. a lot of that is there. >> guest: the sources of the great quotes. when we talk about and a half tacoma i'll never forget the quote from somebody in congress -- i don't remember who -- it won't be long before mexicans will be driving cadillacs out of this country as fast as general motors can make them because of the new prosperity. just hasn't happened yet. >> host: mark in hawaii. >> caller: how are you doing,

gentlemen? >> guest: very good. >> caller: i want to say thank you for your book, america, what went wrong. when i purchased that book and when i went online and got position papers from the white house i finally realized just how controlled the media actually is and how much the prop gap da machine it has become. they're not interested in informing. they're interesting in managing the population, and i think if a person doesn't take it upon themselves to do the research, they're never going to understand what is being done to them. i find it interesting that when ronald reagan became president, we had a trillion dollars in debt and by the time george bush second walked out off office we had almost $14 trillion of debt. and i believe somewhere in the range of 80% of that was generated by republican administrations, and military defense increases. and yet it's very strange how the republicans seem like they're the fiscally sound party

of conservative values when in fact they're the ones that made the mess. and then i don't know if they really think their pulling one over, but what i find interesting is how well and complicit the media is in allowing them to get away with that. they never bring them to task. they never make it clear to the public that it's the republicans who did all of this damage to this country. i'm not saying clinton didn't either because he did with his telecommunications act, his nafta treaties. he lied, gore lied. they had to have known. mickie cantor, they had to have known what this would generate. i believe they're creating a two-class society on purpose and the media is serving at gatekeepers to manage this society into this arena in which the masses have no leverage and no resources in which to fight back. don't have the, the information, the organization -- >> host: all right, mark.

got your point. mr. steele? >> guest: well, mark, sounds like you're reading part of our book as you mention these issues. basically right in term office the deficit, and don and i have been frustrated by the coverage we have seen of this issue, because in talking about the deficit, those who want to restrain it or cut it, the entire emphasis for the most part has been on entitlements. entitlement spending is out of control. and what is overlooked in this is that social security and medicare, of course, are -- taxes are collected to support those programs. so, it's not as the all of that is coming out of the general fund. in the case of social security, a surplus in social security continues to mask just exactly how bad some parts of the deficit are. you're absolutely right from really the late '70s on, the growth of the deficit has been phenomenal. during the clinton years some of

that went down, but as we make the point of the book, both parties, unfortunately, on most of these issues, have had a very significant role, especially when it comes to free trade and deregulation. taxes, it's a little different, in our mind. the democrats have been a little more savvy in terms of what needs to be done in terms of taxes and spending reductions. but on other issues, both parties unfortunately -- their fingerprints are all over these things that created the two-class societyover talking about. >> guest: the other thing here is, back to this news media thing and people getting the bulk of their news from television -- and now that you have the cable channels, it is really -- for someone who wants to think about what is happening, it's a great source. like your archivist, she's wonderfulful she would have a

field day with this. if you look at cnbc, the business news channel, they have been -- on one hand over here, they talk about the -- they promote investments in the drug companies because they're going to give you your best return. those are the ones you want to own right now. wait a minute. they're he ones creating the deficit in part because of what they're charging and because a lot of what they sell doesn't work. so, in a way tv -- commercial tv wants this both ways. you can't have it. you can't say, the pharmaceutical industry is going to be a great source of investment, put all your money in there? and then on the other hand say the government is not doing anything to trim these deficits when they're encouraging them.

can't haste both ways. >> host: we talked to diane in arkansas. she does that on her union, but c-span as an official archives as well, run out of purdue university. everything that c-span has covered since the 1980s is available online at c-span.org. you can go on to our web page and you'll see video archives there. everything that we have covered is really searchable, really friendly there is an official c-span archivist as well. joseph in baltimore ex-you're on with james steele and donald bartlett. >> caller: thank you. i'm glad to be speaking to these two gentlemen. i was wondering whether they would agree that the democratic party, in the early '90s, with the new democrats, a conscious decision that in order for them to be a relevant national party, they had to neutralize the

defense establishment, the foreign policy establishment, as well as wall street or else they would never have a national significance and they would become irrelevant. i'd like to hear their take on the shift that the democratic party felt it had to make. >> guest: we -- to tell you the truth we do not delve too much into the issue of motives and motivation, about why things happen. unless that motive makes itself very, very clear and obvious, and you can sort of get to the heartment we just try to stick with what happened, and there's no doubt that the democratic party certainly in the '9s and today is a far cry from some of the positions it took in the past. i couldn't believe at the time on the whole debate on obamacare you had people standing up in the audience, 75-year-old map saying i want to get government

out of my healthcare. of course government is already in their healthcare through medicare. the reason we have medicare is because of the democratic party in the 1960s under lyndon johnson that put that through. we have social security because of the democratic party in the 1930s under fdr. so there's a rich tradition of doing these kinds of things by the democrats. there's no doubt the party is not as populist based as it once was. whether the country as a whole has shifted that much or whether they were reading the wrong clips in the media, frankly i'm not sure we can tell you what it was but there definitely has been a shift in that sense. >> host: this e-mail from ron, all of your subjects seem to be basically revelations of corruption of american stereotypical ideal. what you believe is more the norm, corruption 0 idealism?

aren't you driven to be per reppally pessimistic about the future of america by your work? >> guest: i don't see how -- anybody could be anything other than pessimistic when you look at healthcare, which is -- it's portrayed routinely by people in congress as the world class healthcare system. you have to be deaf, blind, and dumb, to believe that. but yet at it done all the time. so, yeah, pessimistic, you better believe it. until people wake up and realize that their pockets are being picked. both by people in congress and wall street. >> guest: it's astonishing, this debate on taxes in the last few weeks. to get the top rate up to where it is, and only apply to people that, say, 400,000 and above. i mean, most people apparently have no realization as to what rates used to be like in this

country. i mean, the late '7s, 1980, when reagan took office, the top rate on earned income salaries, wages, was 50%. on dividends, interest, it could be as high as 70%. this is raised under this last bill from 15 to 20. on dividends and interest. we are so far below what we would call a progressive tax system, what used to exist in this country, and yet even to get this little change has been almost like moving mountains. so i mean, it's a reflection of where we are, and part of it -- i'm not so sure it's education or what it is, but it's a matter that we need to make sure what our priorities are about. the corruption isn't necessarily illegal. it may be unethical. bad behavior, where people just sign on to certain issues and they go that route.

but until people who we elect start representing the broader interests of the population, we're going to be in this trouble. and that's what i -- i think that's what we're worried about. i think america is a land of idealism. i mean, all of these beliefs that this donary has had for years, it's made the country what it is. people made fortunes. and we make the point in the book you can come here and get rich but the main american dream for people is just to take care of their families, maybe have a secure retirement, have a decent paying job. hope their kids do as well or maybe even better than they do. that's what the dream is about. and that's what is sacrificed here. not for everybody, but increasingly numbers of people and that's what we're worried about. doesn't have to be that way but until we shift these policies, this will continue. >> what do you si too taxpayers who may be frustrated with the federal government, frustrated with government,

think their money is being wasted and that is my money, give it back. >> guest: well, you know, that's a legitimate complaint, too, on the waste. on the other hand, tax fraud is through the roof. and that includes on the part of many people saying exactly what you're just saying. it is -- i give you -- this is where i wipe my hands with taxes anymore. i give you an example of just how bad it is. and how unfairly the irs is. this is congress. it's not irs, irs does what congress tells it to do and somehow these people in congress have become masters of changing this, and switching the blame to irs. back in the '60s and 70s, i.r.s. had a fairly decent

handle on the extent of fraud in this country. they developed a system that really worked and that was irs's mistake. it worked too well. and congress took the position, we got to get rid of this. there was -- it was called the taxpayer compliance measurement program. a very sophisticated program to identify the areas in the code that were being the sum -- subject of most fraud. and it worked. it worked very well. except those people started complaining to their congressmen, congressmen started complaining to irs. and as a long-time friend we have here in washington, put it, nobody gets elected to congress by cracking down on their taxes.

this is where it's almost an insolvable problem. everyone should want a tax system that is honest, but people don't. >> host: in "america, what went wrong" you write: throughout american history when excesses within the economy result in private gain for the few and hardships for the many, congress and the white house responded. often reluctantly, usually after interm anyonable delay but in the end they responded until the 1980s and the 1990s. >> guest: this is one of the most interesting aspects of the kind of work we do, in addition to write about how things are today, we go back and look to see how things were. and the whole process by which the income tax came into being is perfect example of that. it took years and years and years, many, many false starts, and the whole basis of the income tax was to create a tax that somehow taxed some of the

great fortunes in the country, which at the time were going basically untaxed. it was the idea that these people should figure out a we to pay for part of the government. average people paying sales taxes and excise taxes and tariffs were supporting the government and folks at the top were getting off. that was the basis of the income tax. it took forever to get that through. other laws were the same thing. fewer food and drug act, which had to do with abuses of medicine and food. that took years and years and years, scores of revelations, of children dying from cough medicine and things of that sort. all of that was publicized for a long time before that act finally got through, i think in 1906. but -- you see similar kind of things. the sec was founded in the 1930s. the securities and exchange commission, way to try to bring some oversight to the financial industry at the time. so, these kinds of things have happened over time.

but increasingly, the thrust, from then 1980s on -- late 70s, you see the beginning of this under president jimmy carter deregulating industries. the whole trust has been deregulation of industries, what companies do what they're going to do is go to be best for the economy. there's a reason for some regulation. as we found out in the whole mortgage meltdown in recent years. this didn't just happen. this is a whole switching of the way the mortgage industry worked. don and i have been around a while and we remember when we bought our first house. when you got your first house and had a mortgage you almost had to morgue your first born child. that bank and s & l want today make sure you could do that. this is totally flipped in the last generation and the reason is because wall street and banks figured out how to package the mortgages, a great way to make

fees and make money for everybody, and whether or not the person could support that or not was irrelevant. and it also made secondary mortgages for people who were fooled and tricked and so forth. so that's a huge title shift that was possible in part because of the -- of an environment that says, anything goes. so there's a reason for regulations. not just to stifle business. the police we see on their corneres are an example of regulation. that same idea goes up and beyond that. the financial things as well. >> host: ken in atlanta, georgia. you're on the air. >> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen, this is just a treat. just a real pleasure to hear you and i've got some good news for you. right now, on youtube, there's a seven and a half minute film narrated by former

president of georgia tech, incidentally georgia tech won the ball game the other day -- but georgia tech's president, the name of this film is, all american citizen team. and it is an effort that the georgia general assembly has been involved in since the 1970s, and we found out that there is a problem and it takes us back to a country western song, looking for love in all the wrong places. >> guest: one of our favorites. >> caller: we don't have problem with the government and we don't have a problem with elected officials. the problem turns out to be the folks that sent them there. and a high school principal said to us over at the general assembly one day, he said, the problem is civic illiteracy of the american people.

well, he said that in the early '80s and only took us 30 years to find out what civic illiteracy is, and it begins with we're using the wrong form of government. >> host: mr. steele, any comment for the caller? >> guest: i assume what you're talking about is the parliamentary form of government, though i may be speaking out of turn what you're discussing. but we've also heard these stories, and frankly, we don't know what the answer is, but if there is clearly a form of illiteracy -- the other thing to be said an awful lot of people we feel who want to do the right thing and would like to see the right thing done, and the response to our book this year has further convinced us that folks are out there, who know what should be done. are concerned about their

country and who would like to make sure the right kinds of people are representing them. the problem that's happened is that the way we do elect a lot of our representatives anymore, we have created a legislative and congressional gridlock in this country. this has gone on now for a while. it's going to continue to go on clearly. all the effort that went into just trying to get this fiscal cliff thing dealt with, which is this mild tepid response to a big problem, as you imagine, is perfectly illustrative of where we are in this country on those issues. so, if you want to send us anything about what kind of government you think we should have, we would very much like to see that and we'd be happy to continue the discussion with you. >> host: is the web site barlettsteele.com? >> guest: that's it. >> guest: the e-mails there are and look forward to hearing from anybody who wants to follow up

on any of this stuff. >> host: do you work in the same office, work from home? >> guest: we work from our homes at this point. over the years we have worked in offices both in philadelphia inquirer and time magazine, but now it's more -- we've each got our office and the electronic stuff anymore, it's not so important to sit there across from each other, and as long as we work together, it's not the issue it might have been when we first got together that first month. we sort of know each other at this point. we know what -- how we work and what is important. but the electronic era has made this really possible. we sent things to each other. we talk a lot. when we're working on a story. we've always edited each other significantly before we ever send anything to an editor. just to make sure -- i won't do something and he'll say, you forgot this or this. so it's very strongly based on a

collaborative thing that we each contribute to each other's stuff. >> host: does one of you write a first draft? >> guest: no. we both write. that's usually determined by who has done the most research on a particular aspect of the book. >> host: are you personal friends? i mean on top of being work friends? >> guest: i'm a curmudgeon. i don't like anybody. he has learn to tolerate me. >> guest: he is really very soft hearted underneath that gruff exterior. >> host: joe in el paso, texas, you're on with james steele and donald bartlett. this is book tv on c-span2. >> caller: good afternoon. it's an honor to talk to you all. gentlemen, do you believe that

everything you've write is the truth? i mean, it's -- do you mean what you write is, that's it, there's no other truth? and also, related to that, the free trade agreement, i live in el paso, texas, and work in mexico, and worked in the united states, both countries, and i'm telling you, it's -- you don't know what the border is until you lived on the border. you don't know what -- how patriotic people are in the border towns. now, we go to the free trade agreement, mexico is our neighbor. the united states is mexico's neighbor. i don't want my neighbor to be poor and raunchy and have a mobile home and trash all around

and kids with sickness and -- i don't want that. the free trade agreement, you're only looking at the balance of trade went to mexico. it used to be -- we were sucking dollars out of mexico. now we are putting dollars in. but we are doing it through commerce, not -- get my point? >> host: joe, what kind of work do you do in el paso? >> caller: i'm an economist and a miner, a mine are consultant, and i've worked in both places of the united states and i'm a mexican-american. >> host: is it fair to say you're a supporter in general of nafta? >> caller: i'm a supporter of -- no i'm not a supporter of nafta in general.

i'm a supporter of free trade. >> guest: free trade. >> caller: yes. >> host: do you find that in your view, has free trade or the current setup benefited el paso and mexico? >> caller: it has. it has. it benefits mexico. it benefits the united states to begin with when it first got implemented. i mean, dollars were coming -- people in mexico were buying american machinery, american this, american that, without paying tariffs that went down to zero, thanks to the free trade agreement, and they could buy legally and pay just the price that it's worth, and not more. and that allowed mexicans to modernize, and accept politically the united states was supporting a corrupt -- and

those people were stealing the money, but now michigans are little bit better, and as you can see, the economy is -- in mexico is improving, and it's -- i think it's growing at 5%. >> host: joe, thank you so much for calling in. we appreciate your point of view. mr. steele? >> guest: two thing, joe. you raise theque of do we believe what we have written is true. well, we do believe that. however, within a topic you can certainly write more on any subject, and so this is a view as we see it of some of these issues. so what we have written is our view of the way we thing these things have work out, especially on the whole free trade thing. only the issue you're talking about, we don't dispute for one minute that there has probably been some economic stimulus to mexico from this agreement. so other part office nafta have

been very detrimental apparently to mexico citizens there in terms of agriculture and so forth. so there's always tradeoffs. we understand that. that's totally understandable. but the issue of what you're talking about, on development, and how good it's been for mexico, the problem we've had in the u.s. that we talk about in our book, is that none of the free trade agreements were sold on that basis, that this is going to be very important toward uplifting everyone in mexico. these agreements were universally sold on the basis that they will be beneficial to both sides of the border, and in the case of nafta, you have to look beyond just el paso and the border in mexico. you have to look at the country as a whole, because many of the jobs impacted are is not there. and we should tell you that don and i actually spent quite a bit of time over the years on the border. we have both been in el paso,

brownsville, other places along the river, also in arizona, california. so we're not unfamiliar with the border and what goes on both sides of it for a long period of time. but that not the way these free trade agreements have been sold in the united states and that's the point of the book. people have been told they will be good for everybody. and we make the point that, no, the promises trotted out that we would sell more, have turned out to be false. we have actually -- we're selling more but we're buying more, so the deficit is greater. the job losses have been considerable in a number of industries. that nobody said would be impacted by this. so it's more that issue than anything else that we're trying to raise. there's not been a kind of straight talk on the issue of trade. so anytime you're going to enact one of those agreements, there's going to be some major

dislocations, but that's not the way they're promoted. they're promote on the basis it will be a snag here or there but overall very good for everybody. and we say, that doesn't explain why we have accumulated $10 trillion in trade deficit in this country and no other country has that. >> host: anything to add to that? >> guest: i think what jim just mentioned there on at the trade deficit, we're all worked up over this deficit spending. trade deficits are far worse. these are jobs that have gone. and a $10 trillion trade deficit and nobody cares. >> host: mike in bend, oregon go ahead with your question for james steel;...

>> it goes to an exotic security, and the tax code is opefully unfixable because ofcs their need for the campaign fush an is that those sellouts generate, and i wonder how you f might be the guy to carry the torch for some amount of torch investigative journalism that te you do.tiga thank you tiforve your comments. . >> host: mr. barlett, do you want to start? >> guest: sure, on the border. >> host: no, i apologize. anything you want to respond to that matt had to say? trickle, trickle down, the tax cuts, your next book, matt taibi. >> matt would be the perfect

person to pick this up, couldn't agree more. >> guest: yeah. >> guest: we love him. and trickle down most assuredly has been discredited, i would think. alto it keeps coming -- although it keeps coming up. that's what's so disheartening. all of these things keep coming up like they're new, and they're not. and i guess maybe you always have new listeners out there or new viewers on tv, but there's nothing new. >> guest: what he, what you talked about on the unfunded pension plan is quite interesting. and, in fact, we've got the section in the book on pensions. and one of the reasons don and i like to do what we do is that you always learn new things, or you may relearn old things that you may have forgotten. and pensions are a perfect example of really the heart of a

lot of the problems of the american middle class has. the '50s, '60s and '70s more and more people received pensions and were able to look ahead to secure retirements. but in the case of private industry, since the '8 0s on, during the trickle down era, those plans have been eliminated. when we did our research we -- and this isn't any secret number anywhere -- but we came up with a number about how many pension plans have been eliminated since the mid '80s. this was after decades of more plans being created. 1985 on 85,000 plans have been killed, workers shifted into 401(k)s. there's nothing wrong with a 401(k). but a 401(k) was never, ever envisioned in the beginning as a substitute for pension.

it was always a supplement for your retirement. it was never to take the place of it. so it's another example on where a younger generation coming along will have less security than many members of the older generation before it. and, frankly, we're very worried about that. and you always hear, people tell you you have to save everything you can do and so forth. couldn't agree more on that. but what's the problem is that it's almost impossible under a 401(k) system. >> guest: i think we're, i don't know, not to be believed on anything. but by and large, people are very responsive. and one of the things i really like about the body of work is you can go back, and it doesn't

matter what the subject is, over the years and find, um, kind of forecasts we've made that have been right on the money. and i love that. and this pension thing is one of them. who stole the dream was in '92. we had a warning in there that if something isn't done, we are creating the basis for a war among working people. those people who, you know, basically work within the private sector and have a defined benefit pension which are systematically being eliminated and those people who work within the public sector -- police, fire, teachers -- who will always have the defined benefit pension. and at some point there's going to be a class warfare there. and it's already started. you're already hearing this.

why should, you know, why should someone who worked all their lives, you know, either with their hands or whatever, an accountant, why should they be coming up with money to bail out the public employee pensions which are just off the charts? they are no -- of all the things that aren't sustainable, public employee pensions now are not sustainable. but yet they're going to take the position we got these, we bargained for them, we got them, and so we're entitled to them. where well, where does the entitlement come from? it comes from the taxpayer. ain't gonna work. you've got people in california in particular drawing down pensions between $100 and $200,000. that's not the real world. and it's going to get very nasty, because at some point people who are actually doing the labor are going to say, hey, what am i doing here?

this isn't, this isn't to be believed. >> host: well, alan puts on our facebook page, what are your thoughts about the occupy wall street movement and what it has accomplished? >> guest: well, it's interesting about this. i mean, obviously, they're hitting the issues that are all through not just our current book, but books we've written on for a long period of time. some of the criticism is that it's diffused and it hasn't focused on one thing or another. frankly, i'm not sure, you know, that's valid. i'll tell you an interesting thing that goes to the heart of it. they have helped solidify in part the idea of the 1%. but interestingly enough, when this came up, you know, don and i actually wrote about the top 1% back in '96. i mean, that theme has been around a long time. so we're, in that sense, totally with them in terms of the 1% and

what that is. i think they helped solidify m some thoughts about what's out there. they showed people these great gaps in the society. and what they've done was not information that wasn't already out there. i mean, i think that's the thing that's so curious about what's going on with the body politic. i mean, the inequality that we have legendary. i mean, you have the top 1% of the population has more wealth than the bottom 90%, or a figure roughly like that. i mean, that's like the late 19th century. and some people say this is inevitable. it's just a global economy, this is what we're in to, there's nothing we can do about it. people need more education. college is always important, education is always important, but until we change the other policies, that alone won't be enough. i mean, that's the point we make. the problem in our mind, the

biggest single driver of the inequality has been the change in the tax code. there are other issues, but you cannot minimize what that's done. i was at a lunch back in missouri, where i'm from, a few weeks ago. and i sat next to a fellow, a very, very wealthy man, by the way, who's also given money to all kinds of causes, as decent a fellow as you'd ever want to know. and he was railing about how his taxes had been cut systematically for years and years and what an impact that was having on people he knew and the middle income families of people he knew. and he said this is crazy. you know, why did we do this? why did we roll all of these things back? and he's giving away his money as fast as he can, because in part he has more to give away as a result of cuts.

and there are only so many houses you can buy when you have that much money, on the so many airplanes you can buy, only so much you can do with that kind of money. and that's what the inequality is about. and we need to turn that back. and that's what the book is about. and that's what we're worried about at root. we need to get back to more balance in society. it's not a matter of penalizing the rich or inciting class warfare, it's just a matter of restoring some balance that's just not there now. >> guest: the other really disturbing thing is, and it also explains why we're not generating the kind of tax revenue we should be, the kind of jobs that are being created simply don't pay the money anymore. for the most part, over 40 years we've used irs statistics because they're the one bedrock, and they're very refutable. more interestingly now are the

social security statistics which show that something like in the recent years, i think it was 2010, two-thirds of the jobs paid less than 40,000 a year. now, those are payroll tax. so those numbers are irrefutable too. what you don't know is, okay, husband and wife working, so it could be 60,000 or 80,000. but two-thirds of less than 40,000? this country, this, you know, when the real uproar started over the deficit when we came out of the downturn, everybody was focused on creating jobs. you don't hear that anymore. and part of the problem is the jobs being created just do not

pay. and now you have this, you know, commitment we've got to begin cutting government, well, that's cutting jobs. and those are going to be jobs that aren't going to be replaced with jobs that pay any meaningful wages. and so the cup's in a real bind -- the country's in a real bind that way. >> host: donald barlett and james steele have won about 50 different awards including two pulitzers. they're the authors of eight books. they're on booktv's "in depth" program this month. as we continue our programming in just a minute.

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mr. barlett, in your greatest influences -- can which we always ask your authors -- you listed a gentleman named sydney weinstein from the counterintelligence corps. >> guest: yeah. sydney was his given name. his middle name was tom, and everybody knew him as tom. of he was just an extraordinary, you know, people are either, have a strong affinity for the military, or they hate the military. the military people i met were just wonderful people, and they were really well educated. they took advantage of all the education opportunities the military does offer. and i went to work for him when i was in for three years. and so he was fresh out of west point, for the most part, as a captain in army intelligence.

and he was just a delight to work for. we were running background informations, and a -- investigations, and a lot of time there were investigations with really serious problems. and he wanted you to work as many days -- as many hours a week as you could and usually seven days a week. but you never realized you were working. that's the kind -- first of all, that's the kind of person you really want to work for, because you don't even think about how much time you're spending at the job. you really don't. >> host: when did you serve in the cic? >> guest: it was from 1968 to '71. >> host: did it help you in your current work? >> guest: sure. the old intelligence school's a great -- you know, if you go back over the history, people in journalism went back and forth with intelligence, you know, all the way back '20s, '30s,

'40s. so they're very common. i took the attitude i was just writing for a smaller audience, that's all. that was the only difference. but he was just an incredible, had an incredible way of getting people to do things. and as it turned out, he ultimately became a three-star general in charge of all intelligence and totally remade army intelligence. and commanded the kind of loyalty you just don't see anymore. i'm sure you do in some of the military, but he was phenomenal. >> host: mr. steele, one of your favorite books that you list is the revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy by christopher lesh. >> guest: yes. an absolutely pastbreaking -- pathbreaking book in my mind. don and i both agree on that, we both read this book. >> host: newer book? older book? >> guest: older book, about roughly around 1990, late

'80s, 1990, thereabouts. might even be a little bit before that. but, basically, there was a famous book back in the '20s, '30s called "the revolt of the masses," and the idea that the masses at a certain point wouldn't take some things. they would rise up and demand this, that and the other thing. laschu from what he saw was happening to america from really the '70s, '80s on, he saw the reverse. he saw folks in power, folks that had the ability to effect public policy and corporate policy were seizing control of things and, in a way, sort of withdrawing from the larger body politic to put in places this things they believed in, taxes, a corporate structure that catered to their interest but not the population as a whole. and he saw this as kind of a betrayal of democracy, that you had the people at the top -- smart, intelligence, who had once been just another

significant part of the whole american system -- pulling back from that. and getting what they wanted for their own. it was, in a way, kind of a complete triumph of self-interest. that's the way he viewed it. book made a tremendous impression on me, because it was one of those book withs that ended -- books that ended up connecting a lot of dotteds that you'd sort of seen and understood, and you could sort of figure out in that sense what was really going on. and it was very, i think, influential with both don and me as we began analyzing various public policies in some of these areas. so lasch was one of those folks way ahead of his final -- ahead of his time, and who also died, sadly, way ahead of his time. but who was, i think, instrumental in understanding exactly where the united states was heading. and so he had a tremendous impact on us. >> guest: he also, he had a way of phrasing things, and the one

that i use over and over especially with young journalists is we don't know what we need to know unless we ask the right questions. and if you think about that and really consider it seriously, listen to any of the network news programs, listen to any of the cable tv. invariably they ask the wrong question. and bad things happen as a result of that. you know, you think back to where are the weapons of mass destruction as opposed to are there any weapons of mass destruction. we went to two wars over this because they did not ask the right question. and it goes on all the time. now you can just listen to it with the deficit stuff, asking the wrong question leads you in a direction that will not give you the answer that would solve the problem.

and it goes on all the time in government. >> host: donald barlett, james steele, they're our guests this month on "in depth." we're going to put the phone numbers up, 202 is the area code. 585-5880 in the central time zones, west and pacific, 585-3881 is the number for you to dial. if you can't get through on the phone, because they are all ringing, you can contact us via social media. make a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. and you can e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org, or you can send a tweet @booktv is our twitter handle. by the way, follow us on facebook and on twitter to get updates throughout the week from booktv. now, here are the books, very quickly, eight books in order. 1979, "empire: the life, legend and madness of howard hughes."

"forever more nuclear waste in america came out in 1985. "america. what went wrong," came out in 1992. america, who really pays the taxes in '94. "america: who stole the dream" in 1996. "the great american tax dodge" came out in 2000. then in 2004 "critical condition: how health care in america became big business and bad medicine." and finally, in 2012, "the betrayal of the american dream." this, it seemed that you were on the a pattern of every two, four years a book, and now the time between "critical condition" and "the betrayal" was eight years. why is that? >> guest: we're reflective. >> guest: getting older. [laughter] >> guest: as one gets older, one gets a touch slower. but just a touch. also, though, we -- this was a different kind of book, the last book. and one of the reasons for the,

this gap is that it's a new book, but it is also in part a synthesis of a lot of things we have sort of thowbt -- thowbt b and seen and obvious served over a long period of time. so it had an interesting gestation period. we think this book was probably gestating a long time before we actually even thought specifically about trying to do a book again. so that's one of the reasons. and i think it's one of the reasons the book meant so much to us, because when you cover these things this long, when you've followed people as many years as we have, you have a very unusual and unique opportunity to write about a situation that no matter how smart you are when you're 25 or 30 years old or even 35, you haven't, you haven't seen all of these things. so we wanted to pour as much of that into this book as just the stories that we did come up with. >> host: crafty worker tweets in: when will barlett and

steele's new book be out in paperback? >> guest: probably early summer or late spring. roughly. that's a guess. we don't know the exact date on it, but that's just an estimate. >> host: randy in pennsylvania, thanks for holding. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen. since the sherman antitrust act was never repealed, why isn't it enforced? i think as long as we have this act with no teeth, what good is it? i think this'll divide our country like the caste system. thank you. >> guest: well, there are a lot of acts -- you're absolutely right on sherman -- in a whole range of industries that hasn't been enforced. and, unfortunately, this has been true of a range of issues. i mean, all -- so many of the free trade agreements actually have provisions in them that, if enforced, would go a long way toward making trade more equitable and fair and beneficial to many of our

citizens here in the united states. so, you know, this is an old problem, but you're absolutely right. we have, don and i have been around long enough that we remember that there was a time when the antitrust division and the justice department was a really going concern. and they used to look at these things over a period of time and go after conglomerates and aggregations of companies that they thought were being counterproductive, so forth. very little of that's happening now days. what's interesting to us, we talk about this a little bit in the last book, so much of the deregulation that we've seen over of the last few years in both most recently the finance industry, prior to that the trucking industry and in the airline industry -- particularly the airline industry -- the deregulation was to promote competition so in a way you wouldn't need an antitrust oversight. the airline industry appears to be heading toward just a very

handful of carriers. so it's the exact opposite of what deregulation was supposedly going to produce. i'm not sure there's an antitrust issue involved there, but it's certainly a concentration issue and will mean, ultimately, fewer options for air travelers. >> host: the poll mac tweets in: my 11-year-old son who's watching asks, why do you like politics? >> guest: i wouldn't say i like politics. [laughter] i'm fascinated by the people in politics. also, you know, all joking aside government workers have an incredible influence over what citizens can do and the way they live their lives. tax policy determines so much more than just taxes when you look at all the writeoffs and

various expenditure cansment -- expenditures. it really dictates in a way your daily life. if you stop and think about it. why am i doing this? you think, oh, yeah, there's a reason, there's a tax reason for this. and so it just, it has an impact on almost everything we do, politicians. >> guest: i think what, you know, it's a very good question that his 11-year-old son has asked. it's not so much we like politics, but we're very interested in how the country's run which is partly politics, it's partly administrative. it's that whole issue how we do things or don't do things. because that gets to the heart of so much the structure is. we've been in this mode in this country, a lot of people, government is bad, government is evil, it interferes with things. and it totally ignores the purpose of government and why

government can be a positive -- and it very often is a very strong positive force for a number of things. and if we do anything, we'd like to convince people, especially young people, that government is not evil. there may be things it does from time to time that are not things that you do, but there is a reason for it. there is a function for it. but there is a reason for it. there is a function for it. this is what civilized societies have and do and it is important that be supported and maintained. it is not some much an interest as something that is essentials and making a public policy, one of the most interesting aspect of the work we do. >> earlier caller suggested underfunded pensions, and he picked out a topic for your next project? >> guest: there are no pensions anymore. underfunded, there are a few left, but you have to be careful, they may be talking about public employee pensions

in which case lots of luck. because that is going to mean giant tax increases and that is not going to go over at all once that rock starts rolling down the hill, people are going to say no. >> guest: no book on the immediate horizon. we are going for one of those phases, not only the book tour but a book is quite an expenditure of energy. we have always taken time between books and we have some projects at vanity fair that have been on hold as we finish the book and have gone through the interest that this book has arisen. all i know for sure is we will never run out of material. it seems like each year things get longer and longer. >> host: have you ever thought about separating, doing solo

project? >> guest: because i am older, i would like to go back and look at investigative reporting in the 50s and 60s one started but that is a little different. >> host: >> guest: we have been so busy with projects there has not been time to do anything else. >> host: dave in louisiana, you are on with james steele and donald barlett. >> caller: good afternoon. my question concerns the dream economy. i am an old fdr democrat and i disagree with some of the new democrats especially the classes of 74 and 76, john kerry and the clintons and some of these other free traders. the other day i was watching television and saw former president clinton on tv talking about green jobs and how the new economy is going to be driven by the new manufacturing economy

driven by these green jobs and what i discovered through my research, in particular dr. henry navarro has a good book death by china, companies in the united states with regards to windmills and wind energy and solar panels and these companies have moved abroad and moved to china. my question is do you see any way that this new green economy is ever going to replace the old industrial economy of the united states? >> guest: you will never replace the old industrial economy which doesn't mean you shouldn't have such an economy and do what you can to encourage these particular enterprises. that is fine but we shouldn't kid ourselves that in any way that will in any way take the place of those old jobs. we have a section on the new book on solar which is in some ways goes to the heart of the kinds of problems week perennial had in this country, how naive we are on issues of trade and

globalization. the solar panels, the technology was invented in this country. if i am not mistaken if memory serves me right bell laboratories in new jersey, solar photovoltaic has always had great product and the u.s. is a leader in that area and never a lot of production in thes and 90s but it was here and there were a lot of efforts at the time to support this industry anyway we can. several years ago there were a number of these industries, companies across the united states, huge job creators, important jobs in a field where we need that technology. china several years ago decided that this was an industry it wanted to atone for itself and so both the national government in china and various provincial governments began pumping money into the solar industry over

there. funding plants, providing the land, low-interest loans, the market basket of things the chinese do when they single out an industry where they wanted impact on the world stage and never affected this basically to drive out of business in this country a number of these solar facilities and when we got so obsessed in this country on the solyndra thing and issues there, the fact of the matter is the chinese problem and driven most of the solar majors out of business and this is the point we make in the book. until we wake up, that isn't free trade. where you have government units launching companies, signaling they want to take over this field globally. how is any private company in this country going to compete on

that basis? they can't. at the bare minimum we need to realize what is going on when it starts to happen and take steps to protect our industries from those unfair practices. the obama administration has levied some stiff penalties on the whole solar area but the fact is the horse is out of the barn on this issue. it is hard to see whether the industry will never recover from the damage done by those practices. >> host: henry e-mails i feel so disillusioned hearing what you have to say but as a consumer i feel like america has experienced such great progress and prosperity since the 50s when i was born. do you see america in decline or do we continue to improve in spite of ourselves? are you optimistic about america? >> i am decidedly pessimistic. we haven't touched on any of the books, but if you do any reading

on the issue you can see this charge coming down the road and that is roebucks. for so long roebucks did one thing, punched a hole or fashioned a screw or something. now they do multiple tasks. once that takes hold this is going to result in the elimination of untold jobs and you can't complain because it is true productivity and like shipping stuff to china which is a giveaway to corporate america. has nothing to do with productivity. the robots do translate into improved productivity and i don't think anybody is prepared for what is going to come. >> guest: the question he is asking our we optimistic or not, the point we make in the book, many people will continue to do ok in this country. what we are worried about is the

number who aren't is growing and the issue he talks about the 50s and in our youth -- part of the american dream was things would get better with each generation and for some people's this will be true. what we are worried about is increasingly there is more and more people that will not be true for and we are not addressing that. america will always be here and always have a lot of strength and be able to do a lot but what kind of society do we have if there is a significant block of the population that is not doing well and does not have the prospect of doing well? >> host: john in las vegas, good afternoon. >> caller: thank you all very much. first of all i want to say that i have given up watching today's america's bread and circuses which is the dallas football

playoff game just to listen to you three. my first question i will direct to donald barlett the curmudgeon who said there were some people who wanted to help. one of the persons who want to help was john f. kennedy in 1962. he signed an executive order 1110 which called for the united states treasury to print silver certificates. he was going up against the federal reserve. the day he was shot lyndon johnson stopped those printing presses. a three part question about the federal reserve. one is is it true that our income taxes go to pay the government's interest to the federal reserve which is a private bank? secondly, why do you not in the two book of yours that i read and thoroughly enjoy it did i not see more about the federal

reserve? why is it that private banking consortium determines the economic policy of the united states? congress and ron paul spent a career trying to explain the federal reserve to us and correct the federal reserve and he and chris hedges who was on in depth both have said if somehow the federal reserve, a private banking consortium isn't reined in or nationalized, and corporate autocracy in america is not reined in there will be massive civil disobedience. >> host: we got your point. thank you. mr. barlett, response for that color. >> guest: there is a lot there. you could do a whole book on the federal reserve. build rider a few years ago did a fairly decent job on the federal reserve. one thing i have learned over the years is don't talk about

something you haven't spent any time studying. i just don't know. is that a fruitful area to look at? absolutely. especially when you look now. is being driven home to me that you can't have massive desk without high interest rates which is something i didn't think would ever occur. if you went to the greenspan era, the interest rate, the government was paying 16% or 17% and you keep looking at the size of this growth and say it is the only 3%. and i don't know how that is explained. >> host: 9 receiving a mixed message, we are not paying enough taxes but on the other hand the governments are not

spending wisely, public pensions. isn't this the source of tax resistance? not greed but conviction that governments don't spend the money well? >> it is a mixed bag. the thing on taxes, we make a point that unless you collecting of taxes you will have more of a deficit and a certain amount of what you do collect is paying interest. it is not really going to proper programs. i don't think it is a mixed message from that standpoint. we see taxes as a way to finance government but at the same time in every government there are examples, but because there are those examples doesn't mean you shutdown government. that is the extreme reaction to that thing. it may seem that we are at cross purposes but not really.

the money to run government, you need to make sure government is responsible and doing the right job doesn't always do that. they're are innumerable stories about government failures but that doesn't mean we believe there should be no government. >> guest: to reemphasize another point, especially because i am such a gloom and doom person, there will be x number of people who will do very well in the economy but the point he made which i want to underscore is the number of people who are going to do well is steadily shrinking and that is the concern. old balance be restored, and there's no evidence that is happening. >> host: an e-mail from a woman in philadelphia who obviously didn't have to watch football

today since the eagles and have their best year. hello from a long time philadelphia inquirer reader. would you consider writing a book about the inequities and other problems in our country's judicial system at all levels. thank you for your work. >> very good idea. anybody who knows the least thing about that issue knows that. actually there have been some very interesting documentary's lately on the 1% court that talks about how many judicial decisions are essentials be favoring a handful of people. that is a very fruitful urea and it is interesting she should raise this question because of a totally different thing, second project i did in the philadelphia inquirer in '72 was examination of the criminal justice system in which we used a computer and a friend of ours had to program these things, we

are massed thousands of records about the administration of violent crime in the city for one year ended is a little different than her question but gets to the heart of monitoring the systems so to this day one of the most interesting things we have ever done and at the time it was quite revolutionary because we have a good friend who knew how to program computers, also would journalist and we were able to feed into these computers all of this massive information about murders, robberies, things of that sort. who were the judges? who were tough on them? with the district attorney's? who were the defense attorneys who seemed to show up in case after case? it was quite a different kind of animal that was made possible by the sudden emergence of 3 sophisticated computer programming. >> host: is your old work at the philadelphia inquirer available

online? >> guest: there are samples of it on our web site that go all the way back. the first story we did was on the web site, not woolsey's. others -- if anybody is interested in something, just write to us and we will see if we can help them out. >> host: barlettandsteele.com is the web site. go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: enjoy your comments today very much and i want to go back to what you touched on on the program regarding social security and medicare. i am a chief financial officer at the world health clinic. my question is the conversations in congress about raising the age of medicare, $5 billion, doesn't make sense to me. i have always wondered, much

larger numbers, so much fraud in medicare and if there was a more efficient effort to go after fraud we could save more than $5 billion if there was an active professional effort to do that and secondly your thoughts regarding health care as far as the profit motive in health care. to see medicare become the national health system. i don't know if you agree with that or not. if medicare -- >> guest: our "critical condition: how health care in america became big business and bad medicine" book was essentially on exactly last point. we talked about how the whole experiment in the private market was failing and until we got away from that and realized that health care is not like some on television, cars and things of that sort but totally different dimension, that we will have problems with health care.

we couldn't agree with you more. medicare would be the simplest way to do it because the administrative costs of medicare are remarkably lower than all the private insurers and why not? you sort of got one platform, one tablet in which to decide what you're going to pay in some cases and so forth. couldn't agree with you more on that. the fraud issue -- >> guest: calls like that make me feel good because it shows there are people out there who really care and have the solutions. will they get listened to? and know what is going on. he is absolutely right on all levels. the business of linking the social security and medicare to the same debt issue should be a criminal offense. and urge people any time you hear a member of congress blaming medicare and social security to the same situation,

where the deficit is concerned, turn it off. shutdown. they are lying to you, period. medicare is a serious problem. the point is the one that gym made. those back to last quote. we don't know what we need to know unless we have the right question and the right question on health care is is the market system really best for health care? the answer to that is a resounding absolutely not. talking about with green or mouthwash, absolutely. advertise away. if you are talking about the best medication, it is terrible. absolutely terrible. the best medical procedure? this is where i get speechless because the stupidity of trying to use the market system for healthcare is overwhelming. you want the best system for every one. you want the best procedures for everyone, you want people to all

have -- this goes back to eat quality, period. one health care system for the affluent and another for everyone else, then fine, use the market system but that is what you end up with. you will never get a good health care system. >> host: what is your take on the 2009 affordable care act? >> guest: the first thing about it which is a positive, they want to bring in the uninsured, people who don't have coverage, that is good. we wrote about that in our book about not just how health care in america became big business and bad medicine". >> guest: we made a point in the book is not just those without insurance but those who are underinsured. almost as big an issue as those with insurance because deductibles are so high in some cases. that is a good step. to our mind the biggest flaw in the bill has been its still

leaves providing of that insurance in the hands of private insurance companies rather than making something like medicare your overall provider and letting people buy supplemental coverage as they do now with medicare through private insurance. one of these days we may get to that because the way it is now means a certain amount of excess cost but from the standpoint of opening the door and getting care to people who didn't, it is good not because i know, who really have read the act, say there are a lot of good things that shifting the emphasis to care and away from the procedure driven health care system we have. we don't know that that is true or will never work out so we won't know the full reading of that for some time to come. >> host: soviet e-mails in ask the arturs what they think it will take to light a fire and to the growing numbers of u.s.

disenfranchised. >> guest: we have asked ourselves that question. >> guest: that is one we ask all the time. how long are you people going to put up with this and when you going to respond. it has to come from the people did it won't come from the political parties. won't come from anyone sitting in washington. it is going to come from ordinary citizens who decide that is it. >> host: morgan in houston. i am reading robert caro's a power broker about robert moses. was an amazing bill rider when working for governor smith in albany. any comments on mr. moses, how used his skills to get taxpayer money? >> guest: mr. moses was the best at that. we are both fans of that particular book and moses was a genius at figuring out ways to

put government to work. he had a lot of criticism, they feel he destroyed some neighborhoods in new york and that shouldn't have happened. if he is reading of a power broker i would also recommend that he read this last caro biography of lyndon johnson. this actually shed an awful lot of white on current events because you see what makes politics, you see what it takes for a president to push through legislation because in some ways it dovetails to the question just asked, when will people respond and so forth and you need a very skilled chief executive who is capable of doing those things. we ask ourselves this question, if clinton and johnson hadn't been there in 64 with this country ever had medicare? we think it is a valid question. isn't highly possible we might not have. now it is there and widely supported by the populace as all

hole even though there are critics of it but you need and is especially clever and resourceful politician who has all the levers to pull and that is who johnson was and what you see so brilliantly laid out in caro's last book. >> host: mr. steele is currently reading the passage of power by robert caro, national book award finalist. from east hampton, conn. beth, you are on booktv on c-span2 with james steele and donald barlett. >> caller: i am glad to hear you guys talking and i will put you on my list of books to read. i also read a book by naomi klein called shock doctrine which talked-about particularly in south africa, where they did everything except handle or take over the economics of the country and caused some problems. i have also wanted to talk

william black, professor read the university of missouri, economics and/or law. when he speaks is clear and understandable, his economic discussion. a lot of the bills i am concerned about being passed through congress contain a lot of give aways to corporations like this last fiscal cliff bill gave over $1 billion to goldman sachs to build a headquarters, nascar to 4 in companies to be able to hide their earnings overseas. i see a lot of people helping write the bills are lobbyists. if you look during the writing of the affordable care act, the guy sitting behind max baucus used to be, well point lobbyist, hospital lobbyists and a lot of the people in different

departments, treasuries to goldman sachs, give aways to corporations that people don't know about and you talk about getting people active. i am an activist. i think we need to get away from the democrats and republicans who in my opinion are serving the same master, the corporations and as a working family's party that is developing and i am a big supporter of single payer health care and medicare strengthen medicare for all. >> host: a lot on the table and i want to add to her conversation, in your book america -- "america: what went wrong?" you write successful lobbies are measured by the legislation they stop, not by the laws they get past and along the same line if, many e-mails in regards to your discussion

about the need for more revenue, necessary for the operation of government give your opinion about a massive amounts of money which are miss spent on the packed pork project programs our representatives need in order to pass legislation. >> guest: absolutely right. this shouldn't be going on for a long time or if you are going to do this, the congress should in some way putting place the kind of program where there is some system to it rather than somebody showing up at the eleventh hour with a paragraph with a graft onto appropriations bill and congress could easily be responsible for that, could very easily put in place rules that prohibit that if they wanted to but of course the guys who are responsible for that have their own systems of power. some of those projects are not

totally bad projects. some are public works projects. that is different from nascar but there ought to be a system where you are able to see which one of those was valid and which one wasn't rather than shoving it in at the last minute. this unfortunately as we know is not a new problem. we have written about this for 25 years the way these things get flipped at the last minute and 99% of the congress has no idea they are even in the bill because even their staff is usually reading a 700 page tax bill or appropriations. >> guest: this is an area, anything to gain by slipping this in, and nothing to lose. the one thing missing from government today are penalties imposed automatically.

it will benefit goldman sachs, pointed out, you lose your job period. this will require major legislative overhaul. -- benefits one corporation in history. >> guest: the goldman sachs provision. >> host: have never be that? [talking over each other] >> guest: that doesn't mean it is not there. >> host: in your book america:who really pays the taxes? there was a tax proposal for restructuring the tax system. and you begin with the fine income to be taxed in this country in concise terms of the sixteenth amendment, eliminate all itemized deduction, restore

progressive system, at least 12 brackets from 5% to 70%, keep the personal exemption, tax capital gains, and all incomes and all people and all investors, impose excise tax and trading, social security retirement age and end payments to people. and income received 2% to 3% median income, after they've gotten back with they paid in. means test like all government benefits, imposing economic penalty for tax fraud instead of criminal one. where did this restructured proposal come from? >> guest: that is a pretty good proposal. it came from nobody. we have been very consistent on

penalties in economic matters. michael newcomb went to prison richer than he ever was. it is ridiculous. take all of their money. you commit an economic crimes the government seizes every last asset you have and writes you a check for median family income and you start life anew. if anybody else you try to shield that's, shield money, same thing happens to them. in other words there have got to be serious penalties that will deter or have more of a chance of deterring this kind of activity than it is today, the criminal thing is ridiculous. >> guest: the idea behind taxing income from whatever source is very simple because the code is loaded with all these things. we know from the presidential campaign by mitt romney, gave such a low rating to federal income tax because of the gimmick he had as a private equity manager.

that is one of those loopholes in the code that could be close and shut down. that would be a way that everybody is treated like. that is what is so dramatic for the last decade, what was so amazing about the bush tax cuts in 2003, dividend income interest income tax at 15%, almost the entire history of the income-tax dividend income has been taxed at whatever your final tax rate was on your bill whether it was 30% or 50, as recently as late 70s, that was 70% on dividend if you were really wealthy. so this has been reduced to 15% for the first time in history. another example of how a tax break has accrued to the very wealthy and increased inequality because dividends, a taxable

dividends go overwhelmingly to a tiny percentage of americans all of whom are at the top of the spectrum of society. that is what makes these last negotiations over the cliff amazing in terms of how little is really done so the tax on dividends now goes 15% to 20%. by historic standards this is still -- >> guest: it is a giveaway. >> guest: still astonishingly low. do everything there. make it across the board. whatever your income is this is what you pay, put in the brackets. hope somebody is making $3 million and they will be paying more of the last segment of their income. not going to affect their way of life. >> host: new republican tweets in with the author's consider ranking members of congress based on their involvement in the tax chicanery?

[talking over each other] >> guest: i like that. >> guest: we will have to gin up our spreadsheets and things of that sort to do a proper rating. >> guest: great for the web site. >> host: there is an interesting conversation going on on our facebook page facebook.com/booktv. like us, join the conversation if you one, it is continuing. we won't get to all of those comments that we will try to get to some more before the program ends in 25 minutes. mary in california, thanks for holding, you are on with donald barlett and james steele on booktv. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. the african-american community is conflicted as to what president obama has done to address our economic concerns and i see your book time on the cross, does this book give any basis as to why

african-americans seem to do the worst during times of economic distress? >> host: i don't think they wrote a book called "time on the cross". >> guest: it was on the list. i will explain this. this was a book done by -- let's go back. literature is filled with references to lawyers. :all the lawyers and all of that from shakespeare forward, everybody wants to do in the lawyers and i am sympathetic to that. but the one at the top of my list is not lawyers but economists who i think of them more harm to this country than any other single group. this particular book, after

reading -- they applied economic models to slavery and determined that slavery was profitable. i am not sure where you go with that but tells us what people i think in, like academic circles. all of a sudden it is no longer mysterious that if you have a plantation full of slaves you can run it in an economical way and make money. there are a lot of people you can make the same argument for paying low wages. they make a lot of money that way. it doesn't mean it is right. what gets lost with economists is what is right and what is wrong. they don't deal with that. they just deal with the money. >> host: j. sanders tweets in have your views changed since you wrote who left the door open? that an article or series?

>> guest: it was a time magazine piece which runs pretty much counter to the current immigration rhetoric. we spent a lot of time on the border. lot of things that were really disturbing that went uncovered, still go uncovered. spent some time in family hands for more than 100 years, spent time with people who far from being anti-immigrant were anti illegal even, they provided food and water to those crossing the border illegally and moving into the state's. they didn't want to make a judgment on that. they felt that these people were working hard and it was fine.

then all of a sudden you come to this thing where in addition to that, spent time with people whose families wound up spending a lot of money getting them for legal immigration. this comes in reference to everything we do. our people being treated equally? they are not. now going to confer automatic citizenship on people who are here illegally period. you can make all kinds of arguments why there should be a legal path to let but what does that say about the person who came here at great personal expense and did it legally? what does that say about the

right and wrong? that is where these came from. it would be at odds with what is happening today. have a personal >> reporter:? no. i think it is wrong to reward illegal behavior. i don't care how well intended -- doesn't mean you can't do it but there's a downside to it. >> host: jonathan in richmond, calif.. go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i want to thank you two gentlemen for the wonderful work that you do on behalf of the masses of citizens in the country. it is very hard to grasp what is happening with the policymaking. you make it very understandable what we are feeling on the

ground, the reality is economic, slowing steady, when we are here, unemployment and social security, scraping by, scuffling by, trying to understand what is going on and we discovered you guys recently and thank you so much for your basic patriotism. it is patriotic to be for the common good. can you tell us -- why there has been so little discussion of the treasury, welfare embers, we have welfare embers who have taken over this country. why do we not hear a little more from journalists about right and wrong? >> host: let's get response from james steele. >> guest: most of what we have probably spent our attention on is right and wrong in terms of national policy and things of those big issues.

there has been a lot of wrong in our book in terms of the way policy has been implemented and how detrimental it has been to the average person and we talk a lot about our business and here are two guys who have been journalists their entire life in newspapers and magazines and writing books and we are very concerned at how little coverage you see sometimes on a daily and weekly basis that might shed light on some of the things you are talking about. there has been hoped that the internet explosion of outlets out there which give people an opportunity to write about these things would fill this gap that we haven't seen that happen on a systematic basis at this point but what we try to do and you summarized it fairly remarkably well and we really appreciate that, we really try to explain what the impact of these policy decisions are on average people.

what happens to average people when certain fundamental things aren't done. not just a matter of policies that are done. sometimes it is our neglect and failure to move forward to do some things that are extremely important. all i can tell you is as we talked about earlier we are never going to run out of work. it seems the folks who make these policies have an inexhaustible bag of tricks and deceptions at the root of these problems. >> host: forever more:nuclear waste in america. we haven't talked about that. here's a quote. because the government can rightly say some low-level waste is harmless. it has never bothered to keep an accurate count, it has no inventory of this waste. they know how many barrels of beer we produce and how many cigarettes remanufacture, how many pounds of peanuts we

harvest but it cannot say with comparable accuracy how much low-level radioactive waste there is. has anything changed in the last 25 or 26 years? >> guest: that book ends with high-level waste, the used fuel rods of nuclear power plants, the big issue was somewhere for safe storage and there were plans to put them in a repository. later they put them in yucca mountain and that has been revoked. who knows? that book ended with the assertion that in all likelihood fuel rods will remain exactly where they are now in the storage pools of every nuclear power plant in the country. that is where they are. this industry have a death wish. some people who read that book

decided we were anti-nuclear. that was not the case at all. just deal with the problems that are within that are solvable. deal with them instead of pretending nothing has changed. >> guest: some people ask us do you feel bad at what you brought to light and nothing is act on? we always have a simple answer. these things take time. they are complicated. the nuclear waste issue is an interesting one in that context because when we wrote that book and talked about the low-level waste as far as we know there isn't any more accurate tabulation on that. i could be wrong. i have to look at that. what we said in the book was the direction of federal policy which was to put these low-level waste sites all over the country, we said this is very dangerous because the bulk of the country, the soil is not

conducive to those kinds of installations because every where they put it it was leeching off, creating environmental hazards, viability of states to clean up but the way policy is moving is to create a lot of these. it is interesting in subsequent years this has all been rolled back and to my knowledge none of those sites have been placed in areas of high rainfall and water table problems. most of them have stayed either where they were or in dry arid areas which is where they should be where there is no risk of rain fall. we actually think people did read that book and absorb for a long period of time, there were other voices saying the same thing. any big issue, multiple voices, i don't care what it is but we do think it is entirely possible that book did contribute to that debate. we still get mail about this book, it is 20 plus years old

and people still write to us from time to time through the web site. >> host: why do you think yucca mountain was revoked? >> guest: two things happened this this was in nevada and senator harry reid is a powerful figure in the united states congress but they're actually wertheim not mistaken some scientific studies that raised questions about that. we took the position in "forevermore: nuclear waste in america" should put any of this in the ground, any of the high-level stuff because it is supposedly safe but things can happen. tectonic movement over time, best to keep it above ground one way or another where you can see what is going on and control it. we want to bury this stuff so we don't have to think about it but that is not the thing to do because it raises all kinds of concerns down the line in years

and beyond that we don't know what is going to happen. keep it in sight. it is a better way to deal with it. >> host: ron e-mails in during the recent recession and housing crash the only area where housing prices went up rather than down within counties surrounding washington d.c. where so-called public servantss were prospering for routes the recession and was putting millions out of their home. isn't government the only growth industry in the usa? isn't government largest member of the dreaded 1% and what do you think of the tea party? >> guest: most of the growth in these counties are not government servants. these are the consultants, lobbyists, the companies that somehow or another figured out it is essentials to be that close to government, there's a connection that way.

it is not your government employees per se but an offshoot of that particular thing. this is an age-old pattern in washington where anybody in and around it knows, we have worked for decades, we have been fairly resistant to recessions because of that built in advantage. the tea party, we both say something about that. the tea party we both feel really had some very valid issues. they're very upset at both parties. i talked to a few members of the tea party from time to time and they sound like a lot of points we make in our book. the problem in some cases has been what happened at the state level where some of the gerrymandering, redistricting some of those folks have been involved in creating districts that to our way of thinking do not reflect the democracy as all

hole. >> guest: there are proposed solutions, just don't track. >> host: victor e-mails in robert vogel wrote the book "time on the cross" and your guests misread the main deck of that book in that the main point was slaves were treated with dignity and care because their economic value to the owners was not important, not the slavery was profitable. >> guest: that was true. the two are interwoven. the idea is if you take care of your slaves you will do well. i am not sure you want to make a case for a society based on that. >> host: sandy's e-mail, who would you like to see as our next president? >> guest: we studiously avoided endorsing presidents, congressman, rep.

we have said publicly the plans put forth by romney and obama certainly on taxes alone the obama plan is an equitable plan for the country as a whole, no doubt about that, we have said that. what is amazing is we talked about how mild that is compared to the way we use to deal with those issues. is certainly better than a system that lets somebody of romney's wealth pay 14% of income in federal taxes. that is a rage is. >> host: toward the end of the campaign, the 2012 campaign republicans started saying everybody should participate pointing out 50% of americans are not paying any income tax. what is your view on that? >> guest: the income keeps going down. you reach a point where ordinarily i would agree and say

absolutely. everyone should be participating in the society. the income keeps going down for those people at the bottom, and i don't know how you can get more money out of them. >> guest: ignored the fact that those people are not paying federal income taxes still paying social security and medicare tax. is not as though they are not paying something to the federal government. the number of studies have shown the percentage of people paying nothing all is 9%. is not a 40%. it gets back to the fact people are making less. like food stamps. food stamps list the people on food stamps who are actually working. >> guest: this is a huge change. with the republicans making a punching bag out of people on food stamps, people who shouldn't be on a undoubtedly. if you went back 20 years,

everybody getting food stamps didn't have a job. they weren't employed. now the majority of people on food stamps is employed but are paid so little they need supplemental help. that is more about our society than any thing, wages are at the level at which you may need food stamps. >> host: ridge the green in north carolina. is there anything out there that you see to suggest some movement back to placing health care first ahead of maximizing profits and increasing business? >> guest: no. nor will there be under the existing system. >> host: georgia in north carolina. please go ahead. >> caller: i have are comment on the nafta. the nafta agreement have almost completely destroyed the state of north carolina. we wound up they closed most of

the factories and this is why the employment rate is so high here. that is my comment on nafta. it was the worst thing that could have happened. i have always disagreed with that. i think that this country should have term limits. the president of this country, we have term limits for the president and i believe as long as representatives that sit in congress are allowed to sit there forever and ever and ever until they are so old that they fall asleep in the meetings and don't know what is going on anyway, if necessary we know that they are not going to vote term limits in for themselves, the people should get off they're lazy rear ends and get a constitutional amendment, force this issue with term limits and this is why they want to stay in. they go and ask for as church mice and come out millionaires. they are in there for the money

they make and everyone knows they will come out ridge. i do believe this is going to be a necessary thing for term limits. that is the only way we'll get rid of the greed and as far as that we also need an amendment to get rid of the lobbyists. we did not have this problem until the lobbyists took over. i'm 74 years old and still work, still employed, still pay taxes. i don't mind paying taxes. i paid taxes almost 60 years now. i don't mind working. i enjoy my job. but what i do object to is when my percentage of taxes is higher than what mitt romney pays. that made me half under the collar. >> host: a lot on the table there. mr. barlett, you want to start? >> guest: i won't disagree with

anything she said but on the term-limits issue i will disagree for this reason. if we had term limits we would have lost a lot of really great legislators. the other problem is today if you had term limits it would shift the balance of power to the staff and nothing would change if the staff's become ridge. >> guest: i think you're point on term limits, high am not as opposed to this as i once was because you do keep looking at this and keep seeing how what we are getting from this is just not leading towards the results

we need. it come packs back to the issue we need to make sure who we elect, and if they are worth it two years later turn them out. that is harder because of the money issues anymore and the way money influences the election but i still think when push comes to shoved it is the best way to deal with the. don't misunderstand me. i really understand the pain and frustration because we have been writing about these issues for many years and rather than things being better now they seem to be worse. we hear you. >> host: fa any final e-mail. robert young. question based on my observation. is it reasonable to conclude the 50s and 60s were more equitable due mostly or solely to the left over from we are all in this

together meme from world war ii? >> guest: absolutely. >> host: when you refer to the dream and what went wrong i you looking at the 15s, the 40s as the golden era? >> guest: absolutely. >> guest: the statistics bear these things out. personal income for the middle-class and the richest americans in the 60s and 70s went up at the same rate. people could have money and so forth but everybody prospered. from the 80s on it has gone the other way. there is a shift in that sense and that is what is different. some would have you say it is inevitable or part of the global economy. we say no. they are specific policies that encouraged this and helped bring this about. >> host: you have been watching booktv on c-span2. this is a monthly program

featuring author or authors and their body of work. james steele and donald barlett have been our guests. multiple kill a surprise national magazine award winners, 50 awards altogether for their work, they have written eight books. their web site is barlettandsteele.com. their most recent book is "the betrayal of the american dream". we appreciate your being on booktv. thank you for joining us. >> now on c-span2 we bring you booktv. 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books. here are some of the programs to look out for this weekend. at 4:30 eastern, michael gordon discusses his book the end game on the morning show, washington journal. ..